Super (13 page)

In his dreams, Daniel had been reliving that night over and over again. In real life the Supers had won their fight, the Shroud had been defeated. But in his dream, Daniel lost. Or if he won, he did so at a hideous cost. Awake now, and
standing on the edge of the rock pile, Daniel looked down at his hand. In the dream his hand burned away, and there were times, even when he was awake, that he was startled to find it there. Snippets of the dream were slipping into his waking world, and Daniel had started to fear for his sanity. What was truer, real life or the dream? And who’d really claimed victory that night, the Supers or the Shroud?

He’d warned the others to stay away from here. He’d said that they’d explore this place together—that if the Shroud had returned, then it was too dangerous to go snooping around his old lair alone. But that had been before he’d learned what he’d done to Louisa. It was too dangerous for him to be around the others now. He had to do this by himself.

Daniel carefully scrambled his way along the rock pile. Though the walls here were not nearly as sheer as they had been before the collapse, the way down was still treacherous, and no one knew that Daniel was even up here. If he fell or twisted an ankle, help wouldn’t come. Luckily the loose dirt and gravel had settled over the last few months, so his footing was sure. Nevertheless, it was late and it was getting dark, and when he finally discovered the hole it was only because he nearly walked headfirst into it.

It had looked just like another shadow beneath a large slab of limestone, until he noticed the surrounding piles of dark, freshly turned earth. Someone had been digging here, and beneath the slab was a hole just big enough for a person to climb into. Or out of. Scuff marks were everywhere on
the surrounding rocks, a sign that someone had been dragging things out of there. At first Daniel thought he’d found Plunkett’s escape route, but then he saw the two pairs of muddy footprints that crisscrossed everywhere. One set looked like they belonged to someone roughly the same size as Daniel, or with the same size feet anyway. The other set left a larger impression—wider, deeper. Whoever had made those had been big and heavy.

Clay and Bud. Of course they’d been here. This was where they’d been digging for all those rocks. Those useless pieces of limestone that Clay had hoped might be meteor stones. Daniel shuddered again to think what Clay would do if he got his hands on one. Clay was as spiteful as Herman, but without any of the old man’s delusions of heroism. No one would be safe from him.

Another thought had occurred to Daniel as well. A chilling one. While Daniel was fairly certain that Clay and Bud had failed in their search for the meteorite, there was no telling what they might have uncovered instead. Or more accurately,
who
.

Peering over the side, Daniel saw that the hole was deep, and built up on the sides to prevent a cave-in. The weak flicker of electric light was visible some ways down and Daniel could hear a series of grunts and curses getting closer.

Daniel leaned down and took a big sniff of tunnel air, just to be sure. Sour milk. Spoiled fish wrapped in dirty socks. Bud.

His gut told him to get out of there as fast as possible. Survival in Noble’s Green thus far had relied on an inarguable strategy: when Clay and Bud were coming one way, he ran the other. And so Daniel began backing away from the hole. Slowly and quietly at first, then he’d make a run for it once he got to his bike parked up on the road. Neither one of them was very fast.

But Daniel hadn’t taken more than two steps backward before he stopped. He just stopped moving. Things were different now. He was different.

Daniel wasn’t powerless anymore. He didn’t have to
run
anymore. He placed himself in front of the hole and waited.

Bud came out first, huffing and puffing, awkwardly fumbling with a dirty rock. The poor kid could barely squeeze his big body through the mouth of that hole, much less do so while dragging a chunk of limestone. And that’s all he had—limestone. It was a slightly odd color, and to someone who hadn’t actually been close to a meteorite, it could be mistaken for some kind of extraterrestrial rock; but Daniel saw it for what it was. Of all the Supers, only he’d had the fortune, good or bad, to see the Witch Fire rock up close.

Bud backed right into Daniel, butt-first. He yelled out in surprise and dropped the stone. Then he shouted even louder as it rolled onto his foot.

Clay followed him out of the hole, wearing one of those helmets with a flashlight attached to the front. It was too large on the boy—he had to keep pushing it up above his
eyes as he went. Daniel wondered where he’d stolen it from. Clay’s mean little eyes spied Daniel right away. Which was fine. Daniel wasn’t hiding this time.

“Oww!” said Bud, hopping on one foot and cursing. “Man, Daniel, that’s the second time!”

“What do you want?” Clay asked.

Standing there alone with Clay and Bud, a mountain between him and the possibility of help, Daniel nearly lost his nerve. But he tried to picture how Eric would act in this situation. His friend would be calm and confident. Daniel tried to summon up that same bravado.

“I was wondering, um … you know … How you doing, by the way?”

Not a great start.

“We’re doing fine,
Daniel
, how about you?” Clay answered. Whenever Clay said his name, it sounded like he was chewing the word around in his mouth before spitting it out.

At least this time Clay was keeping his distance. He wasn’t getting in Daniel’s face, breathing on him with that horrible tobacco breath of his (he stole his father’s cigars). Clay stayed near the mouth of the hole and was content to leave Bud between them.

“What’ve you two been digging for?” asked Daniel. “More rocks?”

“It was his idea!” Bud suddenly burst out. “He makes me carry them and I don’t wanna.”

“Shut up, Bud!” said Clay. “So, New Kid’s not so normal
anymore, huh? Now you got powers like the rest of us, and you think you’re going to start throwing your scrawny weight around too!”

The air had taken on a more pungent tang. Bud must be getting anxious—his powers were really kicking in.

“But they’re not really
your
powers, are they, Daniel? I saw you catch that tree just as your buddy Eric had himself a power blowout. Now isn’t that a coincidence?”

Daniel felt his blood rising. He’d hoped to bluff his way through this, but Clay must’ve guessed how Daniel’s powers worked. Clay was as mean as they came, but he was also clever.

Daniel took a deep breath to calm himself—and nearly gagged on the smell. His palms were sweaty, but his mouth had gone as dry as paper. He should have run when he’d had the chance, but maybe he could still defuse the situation by taking a different approach.

“Clay, I have to tell you something,” he said. The air around him was thickening into a foul-smelling fog. Why couldn’t Bud just turn it off?

“The Shroud’s back,” Daniel said. “Or something like it. I need to know what you two have been doing up here. What you’ve seen. Because we’re all in danger.”

Clay didn’t say anything right away. He seemed to be sizing Daniel up, measuring whether he was telling the truth. But it was getting increasingly hard to see. And even though Daniel was trying to breathe into the crook of his arm, he was getting nauseous from the smell of Bud’s stink.

“Bull!” Clay said finally. “How could that old Plunkett guy survive that cave-in …? Man, Bud! Knock it off, will you?”

But Bud was shaking his head. “I’m not … Clay, I’m not doing it! I’m not doing anything!”

“What do you mean?” asked Clay. “Then where’d all this stink come from …?”

Clay’s words drifted away as his eyes settled on Daniel. By then Daniel could barely even see his own feet. The noxious fog was thickest near him, and the smell seemed to be everywhere—cloying, clinging to him like it was sweating out of his very pores.

His
pores. Daniel had stolen Bud’s super-stink.

Daniel had hoped to take Clay’s strength if things got too heated. He hadn’t even thought about Bud. And now he was a walking stink cloud.

Bud had his hands on his knees and was getting sick all over the ground. Apparently it smelled worse when it wasn’t your own. Clay had pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth.

“You weren’t happy with stealing Eric’s powers, so you came up here after ours?” said Clay as he grabbed a basketball-sized hunk of limestone from the pile. More than enough to pop Daniel’s head open like a melon.

“I won’t let you do it!” Clay shouted, and Daniel barely had time to duck before the limestone rock exploded over his head.

He didn’t know what he was doing or how he was making
it happen, but the fog got even thicker. Of this, at least, Daniel was glad. Clay couldn’t smash Daniel to a pulp if he couldn’t see him.

The problem was Daniel couldn’t see now either. A foul yellow cloud loomed around him, and no matter where he went, Daniel was stuck at the center of it. He could hear Clay raging, smashing rocks and throwing whatever he could get his hands on, blindly, at Daniel. Or maybe he was just throwing the world’s biggest superpowered tantrum. Either way, it would soon turn deadly if Daniel didn’t get out of there.

He managed to feel his way out of the quarry and into the line of trees. Though he still couldn’t see, he knew he’d made it that far because he smacked his face on the trunk of a giant pine. The fact that he’d gotten out of the rocks without breaking his head open, and that the trees would provide decent cover from the shrapnel of Clay’s tantrum, allowed Daniel a moment to try and calm himself.

As his own heartbeat returned to normal, the stink cloud faded a bit. Had he really created all this smog? Fortunately, the strong mountain winds were already beginning to clear the air, and he could finally see more than five feet in front of him. Daniel wasn’t sure how far he’d gotten, but he knew he wanted to get farther. If he made it to the road, he could find his bike and be gone.

A fresh gust of wind stirred up the air, and for just a moment Daniel could see the Old Quarry road clearly through a break in the fog. A boy was standing there, watching him.
Daniel saw him for only a few seconds before the wind died down and the blinding wall of fog returned.

He could hear footsteps as someone ran along the gravel, then a few minutes later the sound of a car pulling away. Daniel kept moving until he felt the crunch of gravel beneath his feet. By that time, the fog had dissipated until it was little more than a few wisps in the copse of trees. His bike was there, leaning against a tree, untouched. Daniel could actually detect a hint of the air’s normal pine smell out here away from the quarry.

The boy was gone. Daniel had caught just a glimpse of him, just a few seconds. But it was long enough to recognize that cat-eyed stare. There was no question as to who it was.

The only question now was how long had Theo Plunkett been watching? How much had he seen?

T
he super-stink wore off before he got home, but Daniel’s problems were here to stay. The next day he phoned Theo, but no one picked up. He visited the house, but his knocks went unanswered and the windows were all shut with the curtains drawn. The new school year started, and when Clay and Bud bothered to show up at class at all, they stayed far away from Daniel. Now they were the ones who turned and walked the other way when they saw him coming down the hall. That, at least, was a relief.

But while Clay and Bud seemed to be out of the picture for the time being, a new problem had emerged—Louisa’s
powers still hadn’t come back. When Eric had lost his flight and strength, they’d returned within a day. But Louisa had been powerless for weeks now. Whether her condition had something to do with the Shade creature that had attacked her, or whether this was something Daniel had done, he couldn’t be sure. But he was sure of one thing—it wouldn’t happen again. He wanted nothing to do with his new abilities, and so he went to great lengths not to find himself in a situation where he might accidentally steal from his friends. That meant he cut out after-school visits to the tree fort, and he kept to himself on the weekends. He didn’t want to so much as play catch with the Supers, just in case his new power suddenly decided it needed someone’s super-strength just to throw a ball.

Of all of them, only Eric knew about Daniel’s new powers, and he had his own problems to deal with. His home life was getting worse. Eric’s mother and her boyfriend, Bob, were fighting again, and Bob took it out on Eric when she wasn’t around. Although Eric couldn’t prove it, he suspected that Bob had sold his bike for beer money. But rather than escape when the arguments started, Eric toughed it out. He was afraid of what Bob might do to his mom if their fighting ever got out of hand, and so he stayed. His mom had her own personal superhero watching over her and didn’t even know it.

It was a reminder that the Shroud wasn’t the only monster in Noble’s Green.

Meanwhile, Daniel’s investigation had stalled. The days
dragged on and he just couldn’t focus, he couldn’t see how the clues fit together. In fact, he couldn’t see the clues at all, if there were any. It was hard to chase a villain when you were afraid of becoming a villain yourself. His long days were full of worry, and his restless nights were filled with nightmares. The Shroud dreams got worse, more frequent. Most nights he woke up in a cold sweat, unable to get back to sleep. His parents grew worried at the ever-present bags under his eyes and tried to take him to see a doctor, but a doctor was the last thing Daniel wanted.

One day after school, as Daniel was drifting off with an unread book in his lap, Rohan popped his head into Daniel’s attic room. Daniel had taken to stealing his parents’ leftover coffee from the morning’s carafe, but even with that he must’ve been too tired to hear the front doorbell, if it had rung at all. Rohan had no qualms about letting himself in.

“Reading anything good?” asked Rohan, squinting at the book in Daniel’s hands.

“Not really. It’s Conan Doyle, but I like his Holmes stuff better. This one’s got dinosaurs living on some forgotten land. Not very believable.”